Do you think another term is more appropriate to describe the experiences underlying CPTSD? It's now quite broadly recognized that its effect on the psyche is severe and if anything broader in impact and more difficult to heal than acute trauma.
True CPTSD as diagnosed over time by a clinician is the result of complex traumas (complex, specifically, as that’s part of the definition. It’s what the C is for). The term is valid in that context.
In common social media language, even the term CPTSD has become diluted. It was intended to represent complex cases of PTSD which were edge cases, and correspondingly rare.
At some point the social media version of CPTSD emerged as a generic term and nearly everyone who self-diagnosed as having PTSD started upgrading themselves to CPTSD.
The comment above is right that “trauma” has become so generic as to cover everything stressful or saddening in common vernacular. The concept of CPTSD was supposed to be a step above even normal trauma, but now even CPTSD is being brought out as a generic term for any post-trauma response, which was never the definition of CPTSD.
A similar trend is happening on social media with the ADHD influencers now upgrading themselves to “AuDHD” which they say is a special more difficult variant of ADHD combined with Autism. My friends in psychiatry are at their wits end with all of the people coming in and demanding Autism diagnoses or “AuDHD” diagnoses despite not showing Autistic traits at all.
There’s an arms race going on where some people try to amplify experiences into something much more dramatic. These therapy and psychiatry terms start to lose their meaning when they get adopted by social media.
My own childhood included the relatively common experience of being sexually assaulted by a relative and being threatened with death if I talked about it, and as a young adult, while I never quite believed I had MPD, I read so many books by and on multiple personality disorder, and took both comfort and inspiration from the stories.
Like so many other things in our human society, networked technology is making this part of society more visible.
Something similar happens with medical students. They kind of start to recognize themselves in all kinds of physical conditions. It is fairly common phase they go through.
Because that's what many healers outside of western medicine are touting.
People are amplifying because the western medicine approach isn't addressing underlying issues & so people are trying to explain the compounding of their issues in the language of western medicine. The dismissiveness in these comments is a direct driver of this culture.
Western medicine is well aware of the fact that they can't treat the underlying cause of things like autism and ADHD. If you're a real patient with one of these diagnoses (or even depression), they will tell you that upfront. They're not pretending to fix anything with pills.
I was recently diagnosed as "AuDHD". I noticed that doctors who don't understand anything outside of depression and anxiety were more likely to refer to autism as a "fad".
The ICD does have an entry for Complex PTSD, but it may not match what many people think of as CPTSD, which from what I see is closer to what Bessel van der Kolk called "developmental trauma."
And, personally, I look at the world, do I meet the criteria for Asperger's? Probably, although without a time machine there doe not appear to be any way to be certain. But it's a so-what I have had no reason to ever talk to a psychiatrist about. A label won't change reality, it won't provide any solutions, why should I bother?
There has been a romantisation of Asperger/autism because people only want to look at the "benefits". But the truth is that it's a very isolating experience and the tradeoffs are rarely very nice.
In a similar fashion, people will romanticize being very tall, when they are actually many pain points to that experience as well... We always desire what we don't have, because we can't be fully aware of the compromises required without experiencing them.
It's not like I'm not used to it, anyway. At the age of 4, the responsible women at the kindergarten told my mother that I was "too different" (only recently learned this, not that I didn't realize something was going on back then). I have always been able to make friends somehow but there is always a weird disconnect.
Ah well, can't recommend the experience really.
Why would you want, much less demand, to be diagnosed with any particular disorder? Is there such a thing as being fashionably disordered?
I think that if I felt something was wrong with me, I would want to be accurately diagnosed, not fashionably diagnosed.
Anecdotally, absolutely yes. Based on what the Instagram and YouTube feeds have sent me over the last couple of years, ADHD in particular (Autism less so, but as the parent notes, "AuDHD" is becoming very popular) is totally glamourised at this point, much to the detriment of people who actually have to manage ADHD and Autism, I assume.
There is an enormous amount of monetised content around it.
When you see the drugged out people who drive people out of cities into the suburbs or give you another reason to order a private taxi for your burrito [1], note that psychosis is frequently caused or exacerbated by amphetamines. Plenty of people who get a prescription and who feel poor and that the world is unfair develop a "tolerance" for their meds because they are keeping 1 and selling 2 and they're contributing to that visible disorder you see.
[1] https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/good-cities-cant-exist-without...
https://www.amazon.com/Autism-Matrix-Gil-Eyal/dp/074564399X
and you can ask the question of why schizotypy
https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experim...
is ignored which is that by being a developmental disability "autism" avoids the stigma that a diagnosis of severe mental ilness would bring (e.g. confirmed bipolar Kanye West thinks he is autistic, Elon Musk who sure acts like he's bipolar but is not diagnosed also thinks he is autistic) If you told the parents of the kid who's being bullied in first grade who shows some signs of anxiety and seems to be dressed oddly that he has a 10% chance of losing his mind completely as a young adult they'd be horrified. Tell them that he has autism and they can get more resources.
The less flippant rewording of that is that the schizotypal mindset prefers strong-link "positive-sum" problems
AFAIK, schizotypy is not culturally associated with positive traits.